The chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management has said that the need for a German-led fiscal integration in the eurozone would make it increasingly unattractive for all the countries who joined to stay in the single currency.

Also last night, the chairman of the supervisory board of China Investment Corporation, the country’s sovereign wealth fund, put further distance between China and the eurozone bail-out, saying that Europe’s bloated welfare state meant that people did not work hard enough.

“I think if you look at the troubles which happened in European countries, this is purely because of the accumulated troubles of their worn out welfare societies,” Jin Liqun said in an interview with Al Jazeera television. “I think the labour laws are outdated – the labour laws induce sloth, indolence rather than hard working. The incentive system is totally out of whack.”

Eurozone leaders had been hoping that China would use some of its trade surplus to back the bail-out fund.

I think the Europeans should listen to these former communists when they talk about welfare societies, sloth, and indolence. They know of that which they speak.

Unfortunately, I'm guessing, their warnings will fall on deaf ears. Those enamored of the "Europe" concept are calling for even more centralization and government(s) spending. As the Chinese are trying to tell them, from more of the same expect more of the same.

Commies warning against a developing welfare state. What would Karl Marx say to that?

* To modify that old adage: "From each according to his ability, to each according to how loudly he sits in a park in New York City and whines about those with ability - and inclination - not providing enough sustenance to those consumed by sloth and indolence."